Exhibition of the week
Animals: Art, Science and Sound
A hugely enjoyable trip through the strange and beautiful ways human beings have seen the natural world in manuscripts, printed books and more, including a monkfish with the head of a monk and the cover of Peter Benchley’s Jaws.
• British Library, London, until 28 August.
Also showing
Isaac Julien – What Freedom is to Me
A survey of Julien’s work in film and photography, from early cinema works to more recent gallery installations.
• Tate Britain, London, 26 April to 20 August.
Sean Scully – Smaller Than the Sky
Paintings that compress emotion into a pattern of rectangles, in the extraordinary setting of this Palladian house.
• Houghton Hall, Norfolk, 23 April to 29 October.
Unlimited
A celebration of the visionary 1960s art entrepreneur Jeremy Fry, who tried to make art available to all.
• Bath Assembly Rooms, 22 April to 4 June.
Traces of Displacement
Lucien Freud and Frank Auerbach, who both fled from Nazi Germany to Britain as children, are among the artists whose experience of displacement is explored here.
• Whitworth, Manchester, until 7 January.
Image of the week
German artist Boris Eldagsen this week revealed that his winning image in the Sony world photography awards was AI-generated. The photographer is refusing the prestigious prize after admitting to being a “cheeky monkey”, claiming that the entry was designed to provoke “a discussion about what we want to consider photography and what not. Is the umbrella of photography large enough to invite AI images to enter – or would this be a mistake? With my refusal of the award I hope to speed up this debate.” Read the full story here.
What we learned
A €171m feat of engineering has created a museum under a Dutch palace
Ukraine’s most famous sculptor is producing darker new work to reflect the war
We’ve drawn up a pan-European Picasso trail to mark 50 years since his death
Lucian Freud’s friend John Craxton is receiving belated acclaim as a painter
And British painter Cecily Brown has New York at her feet – at last
Internationally famous architect Terry Farrell is turning his attention to Newcastle
Lindsey Mendick is raising the ghosts of TV’s Brookside in her huge new installation
Hilma af Klint’s occult dabblings made her an outcast in the art world
A film might be the best way to appreciate the blockbuster Vermeer exhibition
Florence Peake’s intensely physical performance work feels like an open-ended ritual
The UK has imposed sanctions on an art collector accused of financing Hezbollah
Masterpiece of the week
Pheidias, Horse of Selene, 438-432BC
This ancient Greek sculpture of a horse’s impassioned, energetic head as it pulls the chariot of the moon goddess Selene through the sky has a frenzied realism. Pheidias, the overall designer of the sculptures of which it is part, has given it life and motion: from just its face we can sense the drama and danger of its journey through the skies. It ranks with the greatest portrayals of horses by Leonardo da Vinci and George Stubbs. That’s no surprise, for it comes from one of humanity’s ultimate artistic masterworks. When the Persian army destroyed the Athenian citadel, the Acropolis, in the 5th century BC, Athens rebuilt its temples in a whole new artistic style: the “classical” as it became known. This magnificent example of the sculptures that decorated the new Parthenon at the summit of the Acropolis shows the power of the classical to be not just “perfect” but emotional and sublime. It pants with the power of art.
• British Museum, London
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